Whither Fled?

I:

No, I will not plant this ground
With mace or betel, this a sound
And normal garden. Get thee hence.
I think I need a taller fence.

Me:
It is not normal thus to be
Enmired in normality.
Peas and squash. And butterbeans.
Petunias, maybe. What it means
Is you have died while standing up.
Might as well plant these, buttercup.

I:
No, take them back. I have my seeds,
And they sufficient to my needs.

Me:
Do they draw girls? Do dryads fling
Themselves about your trowel-y thing?
Do garden nymphs, with pansied skin,
Invite your stamened self within?
They do not feed on beans and peas,
Who court with pollen dancing bees.

I:
A pandar of the flower bed.
What kind of shit is this you spread?
I grow to eat. I eat to grow,
A bit of flower there for show,
Mere decoration. Here I till,
Repository of my will.

Me:
And what a way. Spirit will not
Indefinitely be forgot.
Plant coconut whilst still you can.
Vanilla saffron. Be a man.

I:
So I can watch them die and sink,
Mere bitter herbs who would not drink?
My soil's more fit for summer squash
And dirt for annelidic nosh.
I'll make my beauty out of use
And not descend to plant abuse.

Me:
Except for chewing. Your recruits
Salute you from their martialled roots.
Meantime the spirits all have fled,
Your gardens grown from gardens dead.
I fear your dull capacity.
Do grow this pekoe for your tea.

I:
My beets require service. Move.
Their lives need water more than love.

Me:
As the world turns, it turns through black
As well as brown. Here hide your eyes
With this.

I:
A lettuce-leaf. Surprise,
Surprise: you scorn the nutritive.

Me:
You breathe. I do not think you live.
You speak.

I:
I do not think you know
Where nymphs and vegetables go,
Together compost, likely lost,
And do not feel the common cost.

Wet Work

They are not of the state.  They homestead here
Privately, adjunct piddling field of corn
Too shiny to be spent on ethanol.
Deprived of pensions, with a family tree
Ruined by mountain pine beetles and burned,
Not for the fuel, neither for decoration,
Their saints declared fictitious, they accept
That they are spooks, discharged without a mandate
Or ammunition. Yet they hone their knives,
They oil their sheaths, in case the Lord should find
Them home at the last, stalked in their empty yards.
They scan reflexively. The gate is shut
Because it squeaks, as useful as a song
To keep raptors at large, repelling goons
And toothless hitmen, hired by the day.
Don't never write down nothing, they were taught,
Though mostly they ignore what they were told.

An Affection for Battered Objects

More duct tape. In his Weimar he cries out 

For his repair. The rents reach for the sky;
Mere tatters are not held by paperclips.
I had this elephant when I was young.
Look at him now. The light is sicklied o’er
With blinds, the last Venetian charity
This man performs in darkness. He knows if
You ask, but in between he is a boy,
The brightest of his class, a lower form
Than he has yet acknowledged. I had these pants—
Envy me, envy me. I think I heard
That this had happened once or twice before,
To Adam and Erasmus and a Doge
Desperate to recall flesh on demand.

Devolvus Still

Devolvus, underground, preserves,

By lying still, his fraying nerves.
Yet in the sun, his brother walks
Above, and steels himself with talks
And chatter, as if they were kids
And wonted. And no mom forbids
One’s shoes inside or singing loud
Or hamming it up to please the crowd
Of featured hangers-on. If he
Should wish to lie there quietly,
Devolvus doesn’t say or swear,
Since he has time to spill and share,
By wit, by verve, by joie-de-not.
What was that punchline? All forgot.